Enjoying the view from Limbo
The Trump administration has spent much time and energy in recent months desperately trying to prop up Viktor Orbán in Hungary, in yet another obvious self-revelation of the truth of what Trump likes to call “The Russia Hoax.” Hungary was occupied and decimated for decades by a brutal, expansionist Russian dictatorship which supported a series of Hungarian puppet regimes to oppress the people...
Almost everything that passes itself off as intelligent comedy today — particularly that of the “social criticism” or “political humor” variety — is in fact nothing but helpful compliance and submission to the oppressive ruling class, exactly as genuinely intelligent humor can never be. A true satirist aims his sharpest spears at the established powers and attitudinal norms, and says precisely the thing...
Irony is overplayed and lost when its implicit sense comes too far forward and reveals itself as the foreground meaning, hence obliterating the critical distance the ironist requires in order to achieve his defining purposes. For the defining purposes of irony, pursued to varying degrees of emphasis by all ironists, are humor and philosophy–neither humor nor philosophy pursued independently of the other, but the...
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